The bravery of a Royal Navy boarding team who rescued 299 prisoners from a German tanker in 1940 will be remembered at HMS Raleigh on Monday on the 80th anniversary of the incident

A Service of Remembrance will be held at the Board and Search training school at HMS Raleigh which is part of 47 Commando Royal Marines.

In February 1940 a boarding party from HMS Cossack stormed the German tanker Altmark, which was hiding in a Norwegian fjord, to release the prisoners who had been seized by the raider Graf Spree as it picked off Allied merchant shipping in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

A party of three officers and 30 ratings armed with rifles and bayonets and one cutlass, boarded Altmark. Eight Germans were killed and five were wounded with bayonets in the brisk action that became known as the ‘Altmark Incident’.